Russian President Vladimir Putin promised not to assassinate his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky when he met with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett last year in the early days of the war.
“Do you intend to kill Zelensky?” Bennett recalled asking Putin, during an almost five-hour interview he gave to Israel’s Channel 12, that was posted on YouTube on Saturday night.
In that conversation, he recounted details from his well-known trip to Moscow on Shabbat in early March 2022, in an attempt to help broker a peace deal between the two sides.
Putin's pledge
While Bennett was not able to help end the hostilities, he was able to secure a pledge from Putin not to kill Zelensky, who at the time was hiding in a secret bunker to prevent such an assassination.
Putin assured Bennett, “I’m not going to kill Zelensky.”
Bennett called Zelensky while he was still in Moscow on his way to the airport from the Kremlin to tell him that he was not under a death threat.
“Are you sure?” Zelensky asked.
“One hundred percent,” Bennett replied. Within hours Zelensky had returned to his office and made a video explaining that he was not afraid, Bennett said.
Not afraid
He had gone to Moscow at Zelensky’s request on the belief that there was a small window of time in which a deal could be reached to end the war.
“We went in absolute secrecy on a decrepit plan from Israel through the Kazakh region… because we couldn’t fly over the black sea. On the way we prayed and made a blessing over the Sabbath wine, it was very emotional,” Bennett said.
They landed in Moscow where it was cold and raining, in what was his first trip to that city, Bennett recalled adding that he was joined by MK Ze’ev Elkin, then the Housing and Construction Minister who is originally from Ukraine and speaks Russian fluently. He had in the past acted as a translator for Netanyahu in his meetings with Putin.
From Moscow, they went to Berlin, to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Schutz and together they updated France, Great Britain and the United States, all of whom had known about his visit.
"Everything I did was coordinated with the United States, Germany and France," he said.
The groundwork for that moment had been laid two months earlier, before the war, when Bennett visited Putin in Sochi for a protracted five to six-hour conversation, that a walk along the shore of the Black Sea and a visit to his home.
He was “smart and sharp” and a supporter of the Jews, Bennett recalled.
“He was the nicest person in the world up until then, suddenly he gave me a cold look and said ‘they’re Nazis, they’re warmongers, I won’t meet him.’”
Naftali Bennett
'They're Nazis, warmakers'
The one negative moment occurred when he raised with Putin the issue of Zelensky and said that the Ukrainian leader wanted to meet with him.
“He was the nicest person in the world up until then, suddenly he gave me a cold look and said ‘they’re Nazis, they’re warmongers, I won’t meet him,’” Bennett recalled.
“I was surprised by the change in his demeanor,” Bennett said.
During that Sochi meeting, Bennett said he was able to restore some of the Israeli aerial freedom of movement to target Iran in Syria that had become constricted.
“There was friction in recent years against the Russians that had restricted our activities,” Bennett said as he referenced the deconfliction agreement with Moscow established in Syria years before he entered office in June 2021.
The warm connection he opened with Putin in Sochi was shored up by subsequent telephone conversations, Bennett recalled.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 Israel was immediately between a “rock and a hard place,” Bennett explained.
“There was an immediate clear US expectation that Israel would do everything it could to help Ukraine” while at the same time, the Jewish State had two “competing interests” that made it difficult to meet that demand, Bennett said.
“One was our routine activity in Syria. Once or twice a week we struck Iranian targets there,” he said.
Russia, which is a superpower has S-300 missiles stationed there that can take Israel’s aerial sorties in the Syrian skies, he said.
“If they press a button Israeli pilots will be downed and who will help rescue them? Will [US President Joe] Biden do it or Zelensky?” he asked noting that it would be Israel’s problem to deal with the fallout.
Second, “there were many Jews both in Ukraine and in Russia and as the Prime Minister of the Jewish State, I felt a special responsibility to them.
So all the talk about “being on the right side of history” by supporting Ukraine is nice, but complicated for Israel given its own existential needs, Bennett said.
He put in place a policy of providing humanitarian assistance, but he feared US pressure to provide weapons, a move that “endanger both the Jews” in Russia and Israel’s interests in Syria.
“So when pressed by two sides, I went a third way,” he said.
To extricate himself from that difficult situation, while at the same time using his ties to possibly help end that war, Bennett understood that if he acted as a mediator he could also set out a strategy of neutrality for Israel.
The connection he had Putin, Bennett said, was a “rare commodity” at that time.
“There was no one else that had the trust of both sides,” he said, except to some extent Turkish President Erdogan.
Bennett, therefore, instituted an Israeli policy of rendering humanitarian assistance, including a field hospital, but not providing weapons.
He knew that if he didn’t find an alternative policy he would be between a rock and a hard place, “I would be forced to provide weapons and then I would be endangering both the Jews” in Russia and Israel’s interests in Syria.
Israeli mediation in March 2022 was an idea he initiated Bennett recalled. He contacted Biden, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and explained that he could be a communications “pipeline” between Putin and Zelensky, adding that he also looped Scholtz into that conversation.
But it was Zelensky, who feared for his life, that requested the Moscow visit, Bennett recalled.
After his return to Israel, he held “talks [on the telephone] back and forth, Putin-Zelensky, Zelensky-Putin” in a “marathon” push that also involved Israel’s National Security Council. Those efforts augmented negotiations going on in Belarus in March, Bennett said.
Putin’s decision not to assassinate Zelensky was essentially a concession with regard to his perceived goal of de-Nazifying Ukraine and he was also willing to back away from his disarmament demand.
Bennett was able to secure a concession from Zelensky that he would back away from wanting to join NATO.
“I was under the impression that they both wanted a cease-fire,” but in the end, he said, negotiations did not halt the hostilities.
Bennett said that at the time he thought he had taken the right stand to visit Moscow and to attempt to mediate an end to the war, but that was ten months ago and in the end, it's unclear what the impact of his efforts were.
The situation is different now, he said, adding that it was "legitimate" for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change Israel's policy with regard to the Russian-Ukrainian war.